In a search of people who changed their careers and lives after 30, I travelled around the World and fetched their stories for you. If you are looking for examples of meaningful life - meet my heroes!

A Different Story of a Woman in Fashion

In Mexico, in a tiny town of San Cristobal de las Cascas, I found Claudia Munos Moralez. Having abandoned her flashy career with the Mexican fashion business, she moved to Chiapas in the search of big answers and eventually started a social enterprise still in fashion but glorifying the work and beauty of indigenous people.

A Girl Who Found Her Voice

In NYC I interviewed InYang Bassey, now an insanely talented singer, performer and a composer. But until late 20s she was denying her talents by pursuing a medical degree. She said to be even ashamed of her voice, occasionally letting it out only in the shower times. Her black immigrant parents were making it very clear - to be successful you cannot be serious by being a singer, it will not make your living.

Happiness? Really?

Jon Hall has been researching and measuring happiness for over 10 years now and says that it is quite easy to define what makes people happy across cultures and nations. But here’s the thing, happiness and meaningfulness are not the same thing.

Megumi Hagiuda on being serious

"My boss was trying to talk me off leaving, suggesting I would just take 2 weeks vacations. But I decided to ‘close that door’, leaving no chance to return, because you need to have a full awareness and openness for new ventures, without having a back thought, that you could come back"

Megumi Hagiuda

A true calling

«Education is breaking the cycle of poverty,» — asserts Oscar Chiquitó Sabán from Guatemala. «I was born into the extremely poor family. The kind of a poor when you live in a hut made of carton boxes. When me along with my sister and brother have established a family business which has allowed supplying vegetables to feed 5 cities in the region, my father could appreciate the importance of us going to school.

A bag of peanuts.

Christine Sun Kim is a sound artist. Full-time now. And deaf.

Before Christine became an artist she had a long and, as she describes it, “confusing” way, trying various odd jobs, from a cashier at Barnes and Nobles to a teacher’s aid to a digital archivist at a publishing company.

20 minutes of healthy criticism

Nathan is a big and funny white American, quoted — his own description, continued with statement: “America is still the country for white. The system is marginalizing people who are different.” Nathan says that he was living an american cliche, waiting tables — a perfect job for a lazy american. Until one day when he and his then girlfriend gave away their first son for adoption. Today Nathan is 36 and he has just made it to the community college a year ago, with the plans of getting a law degree too.